Prisons of Note

Mapping the use of Music in Contemporary Places of Detention

Prisons of Note aims to map the use, experience, and circumstance surrounding popular music in contemporary places of detention. My publications on this subject have so far appeared in journals Postcolonial Text(2014) and Torture (2013), and I’m currently completing my first monograph Dangerous Mediations: YouTube, Pop Music, and Power in a Philippine Prison Video for Bloomsbury Academic (forthcoming).

Principal Investigator: Áine Mangaoang

Funding: Institutt for Musikkvitenskap, Universitetet i Oslo (2016-’20); Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool (2010-’14)

Music, Place & Memory

Project: The Dublin Music Map / Mapping Popular Music in Dublin

Mapping Popular Music in Dublin was the first comprehensive research study on popular music in Dublin today, based at St Patrick’s College, Dublin City University and funded by Fáilte Ireland. Shortlisted for the Dublin City University President’s Award for Engagement, John O'Flynn and I carried out a twelve-month ethnography of Dublin's popular music experience, incorporating perspectives of fans (citizens and tourists), musicians, and music industry personnel.

Curating Music: Archives & Exhibits

Project: Music, Photographs, and Stories from the Archives

This research and public-engagement project examined popular music materiality. It culminated in a curated public exhibition of music memorabilia at the Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool). I also produced a short film documenting the project, called Music, Photographs and Stories from the Archives (2016).

Pop-Opera & Politics

Project: "Here Lies Love" and the Politics of Disco-Opera

This research suggests a range of perspectives and discourses for understanding the relationships between pop music and politics, through a case study of Here Lies Love (2013) -- a disco-opera based on the life of former First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos. Despite composer David Byrne’s claims of separating art from politics in Here Lies Love, my analysis demonstrates how the music is, through its various multimodal forms, fraught with overt socio-cultural and political significance, that can be read as an escalating revisionist, apologist text that operates in defense of Imelda. An essay from this on-going project appears in the Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches, David Brackett, Kenneth Smith, & Ciro Scotto (eds.), Routledge (forthcoming).

Investigator: Áine Mangaoang

Funding: Staff Research Award, National University of Ireland (University College Cork)

Music, Media & Deaf Culture

Projects: Beyoncé, YouTube, and Sign Language Music Videos

Music is frequently perceived as an exclusively auditory phenomenon. Within the field of music studies, literature on hearing loss and deafness is noticeably scarce. Widely-held assumptions are that deaf culture is one without music -- a community silent to the experiences of music & sound. Media have been instrumental in shaping how hearing people perceive deaf individuals and Deaf culture. Over this past decade, thousands of amateur, user-generated videos featuring an individual or group interpreting or translating a select Beyoncé song into a recognised sign-language have emerged via YouTube. This research explores how YouTube’s platform provides an ideal conduit for the mediation and re-examination of the art of signed songs on the one hand, while on the other, problematises issues faced in attempts to devise inclusive and exhaustive interpretations of Beyoncé’s music through visual signs. Findings from this research-in-progress is published in the following book chapter:

Mangaoang, Á. 'I See Music': Beyoncé, YouTube, and the Question of Signed Songs. In Beyoncé Knowles, Martin Iddon and Melanie Marshall (eds.), Indiana University Press (forthcoming)

Community Music

Project: Sing Out With Strings Reports

I have life-long interests in community music, music as social integration, and inclusive music education. I worked with the Irish Chamber Orchestra’s community engagement programme Sing Out With Strings from 2014-’16. Established in 2008, the Irish Chamber Orchestra provides weekly workshops in singing, song-writing and violin tuition for 300 children across Limerick city, as a Community Engagement Programme working in Limerick primary schools. The Sing Out With Strings project addresses issues of inclusion, equality of access and provision and highlights the numerous benefits that a long-term project of this nature has on the children, staff, parents and the wider community. I am the author of two reports on Sing Out with Strings, commissioned the Irish Chamber Orchestra (2015 & 2016).

Investigator: Áine Mangaoang

Funding: Irish Chamber Orchestra

Partners: Galvone National School (now Le Chéile National School); St Mary’s National School; Irish Chamber Orchestra, University of Limerick